Mary Debutts, of Mount Welby, the house Dr Samuel Debutts built on this land, wrote in 1815 of the Battle of Bladensburg: "we heard every fire.
Willow Oak
Quercus phellos
Willow oak is the workhorse of Washington's National Mall, planted there by the thousand along avenues and lawns. We map 3 of them, in 1 city.
The second largest tree Casey Trees measured in the city in 2023 was a willow oak in the U.S. National Arboretum, 287 inches round, beaten only by the Battery Kemble chestnut oak, and the Arboretum's arborist says it is near the end of its life. Across the line in Maryland, the Park Service registers a willow oak in the field at Oxon Hill Farm as likely planted in at least the early nineteenth century, about 4.5 metres round. A forestry blog says it was standing the night the Capitol burned in 1814; the register does not go that far. Back on the Mall, south of the Vietnam Women's Memorial, a tight ring of willow oaks is either a century old or fifty, and neither source will choose.
Washington DC
The second largest tree in Washington is dying, and the people who measured it said so out loud.
Nobody can say whether these trees are a century old or fifty, and both answers come from the same two sources.
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